Increasingly, many banks are using technology as a key factor to increase their capabilities - to enhance employee efficiency, to expand financial services provided to customers and to establish a strong foundation for growth. But at other banks, technology is a strategic weakness: It hampers employees’ ability to serve customers, causes regulatory criticism of the bank and even exposes the bank to major financial risk and reputation risk if customers’ information is vulnerable to access by Internet hackers.

Banks choose BankOnIT’s Bankers Private Cloud® to increase security and to improve efficiency and reliability. Bankers Private Cloud® client banks have reduced risks and gain more advantages than they have on their own while reducing the amount of time required to manage IT.

There are many reasons why bankers choose the Bankers Private Cloud®. What are your reasons?

State banking departments across the country have partnered with the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and worked to bring in top regulatory, law enforcement and cybersecurity experts to banking seminars.

All of these seminars have held a similar message:

Cybersecurity attacks are becoming more frequent. Attacks are more complex, and C-level executives and the board of directors must be aware of what their cybersecurity risks are and how they are managing those risks.

Over the last few months, hundreds of bank senior executives from across the United States have attended Executive Briefing on Cybersecurity seminars. One of the strongest comments consistently made by the banking commissioners was about the need to have CEOs, Presidents and Board of Director involvement in managing IT risk. State and federal regulators are all delivering the same message: Technology risk is not just an IT problem, but a board-level risk-management problem.

Technology continues to progress at a rapid pace, which creates increased opportunities for banks to better meet their customers’ needs. Along with these opportunities in technological advances, significant increases in cybersecurity risks for banks and their customers are also occurring due to the amount and rapid pace of technological changes. New technology opens doors that become gateways for new risks, which means as a banker you need to take more precautions than ever before to stay ahead of the cybersecurity curve.

There are 24 hours in a day, every day of the year. Have you thought about how you want to spend the 24 hours you are given each day? You could spend time planting pansies or peonies, but you save time and get a better result when you hire a firm that has the knowledge and reputation for making businesses look their best with landscaping rather than planting the petunias yourself. Information technology at a bank is similar.

Security risks, reliability risks, regulatory risks – every day, banks are facing new and ever-increasing risks due, in part, to the rapidly changing technology environment. These risks are taking up more time and becoming more challenging to manage.

Technology is changing at a faster rate today than ever before. New systems, applications and software are continually being implemented, more bankers are working remotely and the amount of stored data is rapidly increasing. These changes make it challenging for banks to keep their information technology systems current, secure, reliable and regulatory compliant.

Directors are responsible for setting policy and managing risk in their banks. However, many directors are not confident in their knowledge of information technology issues and as a result are not effective at setting policy or managing risks that relate to information technology.

Increasingly occurring cyber hacks make it clear that preventative measures against today’s cyber risks need to become a priority. Attacks such as those on Target, the IRS and even the United States Office of Personnel Management serve to illustrate the increasing severity of the cybersecurity problem.